Scott Sigler - Contagious

“How about Gitsh and Marcus?” Dew asked. “Doctor Dan?”

Clarence shook his head.

“So we’ve got losses,” Dew said. “Let’s make them count. Clarence, take Margaret and go to the football field at Martin Luther King High School, about a mile up Jefferson, you can’t miss it. Murray dropped a Margo-Mobile there to set up an infection triage. There are also two Ospreys on the ground. If things turn dicey, you get her out of here.”

“I’m standing right here, Dew,” Margaret said. “Clarence isn’t my keeper.”

“Yes he is,” Dew said. “And he’s getting you out.”

“Have some of your men take her,” Clarence sad. “I’m staying to finish this.”

Why couldn’t Clarence just shut up and leave? Hadn’t he done his job? Hadn’t they sacrificed enough? She wanted out, and she wanted him with her.

“Otto, you will get the fuck out of here,” Dew said. “Your mission is to protect Margaret, and I want her gone.”

Clarence shook his head. “But Dew—”

“Shut your broken-toothed mouth. You’ve got your orders. Do you mind if we go ahead and save the fucking world? Perry, you go with them.”

Perry Dawsey actually laughed. A dark laugh, something he might have let slip back in a kitchen filled with three dead bodies.

“Fuck you, Dewie,” he said. “Chelsea and I need to talk.”

Dew turned to look at Perry, tilted his head up to make eye contact. Perry’s filthy blond hair hung in front of a face smeared with grime and reddish dust.

“You’ll go now, Dawsey, and that’s an order.”

“How many times do I have to tell you, old man?” Perry said. “I’m not a soldier, and your orders don’t mean dick to me. I’m getting that girl. The only way you can stop me is to shoot me, and this time I’ll shoot back. With your own gun.”

Perry raised his eyebrows and lifted a pistol, not pointing it at Dew, more of a show-and-tell gesture.

“Sir!” A big black man, almost as big as Perry, ran up to Dew. “Sir, someone is sticking a white flag out the front door.”

“Son of a bitch,” Dew said. “Let’s see if we can close this out. Nails, have half your men target the second-floor windows, the other half the ground floor. I don’t want to kill any hostages, but I’m not in the mood to be shot at, either.”

“Got it,” Nails said, then started barking orders. Margaret had never heard a human being that loud.

Dew looked at Perry again. “I suppose if I tell you to stay here, you’ll just ignore me?”

Perry nodded.

Dew sighed. “Fine, fuck it. Let’s go.”

Perry’s slow breathssteamed in the cold air, carried away by the breeze coming off the river. The helmet felt cold on his head, but his flak jacket trapped his body heat and made him sweat despite the freezing temperature. He gripped the .45 tightly and followed Dew around the corner. Dew carried an M4, barrel angled toward the ground. Jets still screamed overhead, their engine roars echoing across the cityscape. Far up ahead, the RenCen continued to burn like a tall, smoldering black torch, a column of greasy smoke angling up and trailing across downtown Detroit. Helicopters hovered all over the place, probably waiting for more of Ogden’s men to show themselves.

Perry and Dew walked toward the building on the corner. The front door was open just a little, enough room for a stick with a white shirt tied to it to wave back and forth.

He saw Whiskey Company men all over the place, guns trained on the open door and the windows. If someone opened fire from inside the building, an instant bloodbath would ensue.

Dew stopped twenty feet in front of the door. Perry did the same, a step behind Dew, a step to his left.

“We’re listening,” Dew said.

The door opened, and Chelsea Jewell walked out, carrying the flag.

Had it been anyone else, a soldier, a grown-up, some twitchy finger might have opened fire, white flag or no. But the image of a seven-year-old girl with beautiful blond curls and an innocent face instantly made fingers ease off triggers, if only a little.

To anyone else she looked innocent, but Perry saw deeper. He saw a nightmare, something dark and self-serving, something happy to destroy anything that didn’t give her what she wanted. He didn’t care what he had to do, how far he had to go—Chelsea Jewell would never leave this place alive.

She walked ten feet from the door, far enough to stand in the debris-strewn, potholed street.

Perry stepped forward. Time to end this. A hand on his chest—Dew pushing him back. Perry wanted to shoot her, but he would back Dew’s play.

“We wanna negotiate,” Chelsea said. “My mommy needs help.”

“Tell all your men to throw out their weapons,” Dew shouted, loud enough so the men in the building could hear him.

Chelsea stood there, motionless save for the white flag still twitching in her little hand. Guns flew out of the building’s broken windows and clattered on the sidewalk. Two came from the ground floor, just one from the second. Was that all Ogden had left? Three gunmen?

More silence.

“Where’s Col o nel Ogden?” Dew asked.

“He will come out now, with my mommy,” Chelsea said. “She’s hurt, she needs help.”

Perry heard Nails’s bellowing voice. “Squad One, move up!”

Soldiers of Whiskey Company stepped out from cover and moved forward, forming a wide half circle around Chelsea.

She turned and walked back through the door. Perry started to follow her inside, but Dew’s hand on his chest stopped him again. She slipped inside, out of sight. Only a few seconds of tense waiting later, a man walked out. Ogden. He reached back and pulled something through the door. Something big, like a two-legged hippo. Gray. Wearing… pants?

Wait.

The man wasn’t pulling that thing.

That thing… was walking.

Margaret watched anobscenity walk out of the building.

“What the fuck?” Clarence said. “What is that?”

It was a woman. A woman horribly bloated to insane proportions. Her arms were swollen to the point where the skin stretched out thin and semitransparent like a balloon, or like the casing of a sausage sizzling away on a grill. Her stomach distended like a cartoon-character. Her breasts looked massive, misshapen, like beach balls. Her face was puffed up to the point that her eyes were nothing more than stretched, squinting slits. The woman couldn’t see—that’s why Ogden led her forward.

“Stay where you are!” Dew screamed. “Ogden, stop or we shoot!”

Guns rattled as soldiers took aim. Ogden stopped. So did the woman. With a smooth, confident motion, Ogden reached into his pocket, drew out a grenade and pulled the pin. He jammed the grenade into the woman’s bloated folds.

Dew fired. Ogden’s head jerked to the side, and he dropped, lifeless.

Next came two long seconds, a pregnant pause. Margaret and the soldiers stared at the obscenely bloated woman standing next to Colonel Charlie Ogden’s fallen body.

Someone started firing.

A dozen M4s suddenly erupted, bullets punching into the monstrosity that had once been the beautiful Candice Jewell. Each bullet kicked out a gray jet like the spray of a miniature fire extinguisher. She stumbled back a step, arms comically pinwheeling as she fought for balance.

And then the grenade went off.

A bang, no flash. A cloud of gray peppered with red, fleshy shrapnel.

The cloud expanded, billowing past Dew and the men who had surrounded Chelsea. It thinned as it spread, a translucent sphere growing more and more transparent. The soldiers turned to run, but the cloud engulfed them before they made it three steps. It blew past them, seemingly hungry for the next man in line, and the next.